The Power of Six

The souped-up IPv6 promises the muscle and speed to track just about any agency asset through the Internet.

Imagine every communications device, airplane, tank, ship-and every working part on those planes, tanks and ships-had an Internet Protocol address, the proverbial license plate needed to traverse the information highway. If that were the case, any of those assets could easily be categorized, addressed, labeled, referenced and, most important, located.

That's government's vision, but getting there will take time, perseverance and a technological leap from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to the new and improved IPv6. An Internet Protocol is the set of rules by which data is sent from one computer to another. An IP address is four numbers set apart by periods, each number ranging from zero to 255. For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address.

The expansive IPv6 provides much-needed additional IP addresses-enough to provide every asset with its own. IPv4 allows for 4.3 billion addresses, which goes a long way toward supporting the constantly growing number of devices such as computers and satellites, Global Positioning Systems and mobile phones. IPv6 will increase that number significantly.

The extra capacity is critical to the federal government. It would allow the Defense Department, for example, to create an address for every aircraft, each of the plane's subsystems and every one of its components.

"If you can address a component, then that component can report that it's going bad before it dies out, so you can plan its maintenance with minimum interruption," says Osama Mowafi, chief technology officer at SI International Inc., a Reston, Va., systems integrator that supports the Defense Information Systems Agency in the Defense transition to IPv6.

Benefits such as those prompted Defense to mandate a move from IPv4 to IPv6 by 2008. All new Defense technology purchases since October 2003 have to be IPv6-compatible.

Myriad other benefits of IPv6 will change the way organizations do business. The technology will break barriers to information-sharing, says Charles Lynch, chief of Defense's IPv6 Transition Office, spearheaded by DISA. "Every entity that needs to be reached, whether it's a PC, an automobile or an electronic component on an aircraft, will have multiple IP addresses," he says. "Each device can have addresses that permit only local access, creating a virtual intranet within an organization, or they can have addresses that have global reach."

IPv6 also will drastically reduce the time it takes to set up ad hoc networks in warfighting situations, thanks to a new feature called Neighbor Discovery. With it, "devices discover their neighbors and start setting up ad hoc networks by themselves, so warfighters would no longer have to take the time to set up a network between personnel, equipment and vehicles with trucks, antennas and phones," Mowafi says.

Information security will be enhanced because IPv6 requires Internet Protocol Security, a set of procedures for network security. "It will be possible to use the protocol to perform authentication and will permit every data flow to be encrypted," Lynch says.

Once IPv6 is fully implemented, government users will gain other capabilities, such as monitoring multiple assets in real time. "If geospatial addressing is used, for example, logistics items could be tagged with an address permitting users to track their location and movement," Lynch says. "Users would no longer have to wait for an item to arrive at a transfer station and be logged before they could identify its whereabouts and status." Some agencies already use such tracking systems, but IPv4 limits their capability.

The Army and Navy are moving toward IPv6, but other agencies and departments seem to have a wait-and-see attitude, watching Defense's progress. Those that have expressed interest include the departments of Homeland Security and Treasury, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Office of Management and Budget. The Office of the President sent employees to a recent conference sponsored by IPv6 Summit Inc., an organization that hosts symposiums on the technology for federal, business and technology leaders.

"All of these agencies will convert to IPv6 at some point and realize the same usability, flexibility and deployability capabilities version 6 brings to the market," says Rod Murchison, senior director of product management in the security products group of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper Networks, a networking and security solution provider .

Today, the Defense IPv6 Transition Office is defining milestones, identifying specific IPv6 functions needed at each stage and developing specifications that will allow various states of IPv4 and IPv6 to interoperate. The lessons learned will be available to agencies that request them, Lynch says

Chief among the risks of Defense's transition is the department's dependence on commercial products-they must be IPv6-capable. One of the toughest challenges will be moving to compatible applications.

That might be only the tip of the iceberg, says Bruce Fleming, divisional technology officer for Arlington, Va.-based Verizon Federal Network Systems. "All this is uncharted territory," he says.